Sutton on the Forest Film Club Winter Programme

Tuesday 5th DecemberSkyfall

This is the seventh time Judi Dench has played the enigmatic spy-chief M. But it is only in this storming Bond movie that her M has really been all that she could be. Under the stylish direction of Sam Mendes, Dench’s M is quite simply the Bond girl to end all Bond girls.

The 50th anniversary of the big-screen Bond was the right time to pull off something big. Skyfall is a hugely enjoyable action spectacular. What a rush! From the opening in Istanbul to the final siege shootout in the Scottish Highlands, this film is a supremely enjoyable and even sentimental spectacle, giving us an attractively human (though never humane) Bond. Despite the title, he is a hero who just keeps on defying gravity.The Guardian

Tuesday 16th JanuaryDunkirk

Dunkirk is a 2017 war film written, directed, and co-produced by Christopher Nolan that depicts World War II’s Dunkirk evacuation. It portrays the evacuation from three perspectives: land, sea, and air. It has little dialogue, since Nolan sought to create suspense from cinematography and music.

Nolan’s astonishing new film, a retelling of the Allied evacuation of occupied France in 1940, is a work of heart-hammering intensity and grandeur that demands to be seen on the best and biggest screen within reach (Telegraph)

Tuesday 20th FebruaryViceroy’s House

Lord Mountbatten (Hugh Bonneville) arrives at Viceroy’s House in Delhi in 1947 with his strong-willed wife Edwina (Gillian Anderson) and daughter Pamela. As the final Viceroy of India, he is in charge of overseeing the dissolution of the British Raj and the establishment of an independent Indian nation. Mountbatten attempts to mediate a disagreement between the two major Indian political leaders, Jawaharlal Nehru, who wants India to remain intact as one nation after independence, and Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who wishes to establish the separate Muslim state of Pakistan.

Chadha’s heartfelt and very personal drama about the traumas of partition, which strives to dramatise the epochal events of 1947 for the widest possible audience, including those who know nothing of the independence of India or the creation of Pakistan. (Guardian)